Wizard and Warden, prequel three

Darkvision was essential on the waters of the Opreto. There were shiplamps, of course, but they burned a lot of fuel and still missed things; a sensible captain used them sparingly. Cleave Sparkstone had been a ship's captain for eighty years now, and if the current venture wasn't entirely sensible he still intended to keep his crew focused on what would work. 

The wizard and his pet warrior had done a grand job of clearing the decks; his people had taken injuries and a few were out of commission, but nobody had actually died and nobody seemed likely to. If they could finish off these pirates, it would cement his name as a captain that nobody should want to cross.  

"Starboard side, close," said his First Mate Porphyry, leaning over the rail. "Tracking just ahead of us. Hold course."

"Hold course!" he called, and listened as the word was passed back. Lizard-folk didn't swim as quickly as some aquatic species, but they could hold their breath for a long time. Tracking the fleeing attackers across the water required caution, patience, and skill. "Anything from the prisoner?" he asked the Bosun, who was waiting beside him. 

"I'll check."

A moment later the Bosun was back, the warrior beside him. She was back to her regular size, sensibly armored in studded leather, and smiling as she said something to his bosun. "Captain," she said by way of greeting. "The prisoner says she knew this was a mistake and that sooner or later we dwarves would strike back. She'd like us to sink the boat her people are using and let them swim away; she says she can guide us to the cave they've been using to store their booty."

"You believe her?" 

"Yes and no," the warrior admitted. "I think she was the war-leader's wife, or mate, or whatever it is that lizard-folk have. I'd be willing to bet that she actually did argue that they should change tactics or quit while they were ahead. She still came along to protect him, though. And I'm sure she doesn't want any more of her people to die."

The wizard Valerius joined them on the foredeck. "How goes it?"

"We're tracking them," Cleave told him. "It's not easy, holding our speed down like this, but we're still with them." 

"Could you sink their ship?" asked the warrior Malwyn, looking at her wizard. "If you could, we might convince our prisoner to lead the rest of them out of Opreto and settle somewhere else."

"They're pirates," Cleave observed. "Silverkeep law says their lives are forfeit." 

"True," said the wizard Valerius. "How many of your crew are you willing to sacrifice to make that happen? Right now we haven't lost anyone. If we back them into a corner and annihilate them... I don't think we can manage that without losses. And they're lizardfolk on the water; they might surprise us."

Cleave ground his teeth, but the wizard was right. 

"We've already hurt them, badly," the warrior added. "The ones who stayed behind are likely--"

"SHIP!" called the First Mate, looking ahead. The rest of them saw it a moment later. 

Valerius sighed. "My turn, I suppose," he said, and strode for the railing. Malwyn followed automatically.

Driving Needs, part fifteen

Ice skating didn't terrify him, but Chris was more than willing to admit that he wasn't any good at it. He wobbled out onto the ice, struggling desperately to keep his balance and held upright mainly by the fact that the rented skates were laced as tightly as he could manage. Antoinette glided past him, then turned in place and continued moving backwards so she could look him in the face. 

"Well?" asked Elyssa lightly. "Are you terrified?"

"No," Chris answered firmly. "Awkward, unbalanced, and--" He tried to extend a leg and propel himself forward, wobbled, and promptly fell on his ass instead. "--And a little bit sore," he admitted, then set about the task of getting back upright. 

Two years earlier, he would never have gone out on the ice like this. He would have expressed disinterest and avoided it. Now, after the Incident at Pettibone -- which was how the Magi apparently all referred to it -- he cared less, about his dignity and about everything else. And he was supposed to be just a wolf, so he was supposed to be beholden to his magus, even if this wasn't strictly a situation where she was giving orders. He knew Antoinette wouldn't press the issue if he really refused, and that made him perversely more willing to go along with what she wanted. Was that how teams were formed? 

He tried again, and this time he went further before he had to reach for the wall and steady himself. Elyssa was more certain on her skates; she didn't skate backwards, but she seemed perfectly in control of her starts and stops, her turns and sweeps. Was this something that wolves learned when they grew up out in the Grey? Was he giving himself away by not knowing this already?

If so, the damage was already done. The knowledge was thin consolation, but he held to it anyway. And while this might disprove Grundus' theory -- that he was an older, more powerful wolf pretending to be young and inexperienced -- it would also lend weight to Magus Frummelt's theory that he was a wolf who had been raised in the Mundus, by magi; possibly even a halfbreed. 

"You're getting better," Antoinette said, coming up beside him. "You're nearly all the way around now."

A small child swept past him and he flinched, stumbled, and went down again. "Better isn't good," he said. 

"Maybe not," Antoinette admitted as she helped him back up, "but it's a lot better than worse."

A Minor Rant About Changing Jobs

I'm changing jobs soon. Not just moving within my current employment, but heading off to another job for a different employer at a substantial increase in pay for doing a job that's a lot of what I'm doing now, but with a much better focus, a chance to learn the ropes and possibly even get training, and without twenty-something years worth of accreted other-duties-as-assigned. 

This is being framed as a situation where I received an offer that was "just too good to pass up". That is the kind of bullshit that management comes up with when they don't want to admit that they fucked up and failed to prevent an entirely preventable situation. It's not that I got an exceptionally good offer; it's just that someone was willing to pay me what I'm worth. It's not that I'm moving to an amazingly good work environment, it's just that after years of being largely ignored, trying to find ways around weird and unnecessary roadblocks, and being vastly better-appreciated by every other department that I worked with than I was by the so-called leadership of my own, it'll be really nice to work with people who clearly want me there. 

Six months ago I suggested that they -- our IT management -- really ought to get me a minion, someone I could introduce to all the things that I do and who could work on projects that I simply didn't have time to get to. Four weeks later, management came back with the suggestion that I should cross-train with at least one of my co-workers. Leave aside how insulting that is; when something comes up with one of "my" systems that A) needs troubleshooting, and B) would therefore be a valuable learning opportunity, I need that particular co-worker to take care of issues coming in from another system so I can focus long enough to fix the problem. End result: no management experience for me, no training for my co-worker (who frankly already has enough to keep up with), and nobody in the department has a clear idea of what all I actually do.

Even so, I asked my soon-to-be employer for a full three weeks before I started with them, because I knew it was going to take that long to pull together my documentation for whatever poor bastard(s) my current job responsibilities got dumped on. As it happens, the hiring cycle for my new employer stretched that out to nearly a full four weeks. 

Turns out I'm going to need all of that -- possibly more, but that's not my problem. I have two significant projects that I'm trying to finish before I go, if I can block out the time now that word has gotten around and everybody is suddenly panicking about the fact that I'm leaving. 

And then, last week, my former boss -- now our deputy CIO -- started trying to get re-acquainted with my website-related duties, because he'd tried to add a new editor and suddenly learned that it isn't as easy as just putting them in the right group in Active Directory. That particular internal site is running on ridiculously old Content Management software, and desperately needs to be moved to something new. To add a new user, you need to go into the goddamned SQL, open a particular table, and add the new user there.

This was the point where our Deputy CIO suddenly remembered that he'd had An Idea to move that whole Intranet site over to Sharepoint. That was the point where I sent him a link to the site that I'd finished setting up for that purpose between Christmas and New Year's of 2021, and reminded him that I'd informed both him and our actual CIO that this was done and ready to go, multiple times. What I'd gotten in response was basically, "This'll need to be run past the other department heads," and then radio silence. 

But here we are, looking at this now, with our Deputy CIO suddenly realizing that this was about to become his problem, and he says to me, "I know you're busy pulling documentation together, but could you go through this site and get it up to date? It'd be a nice feather in your cap before you leave."

What I told him at the time -- on the phone, unprepared for this bullshit -- was that I had two solid projects that I was trying to finish before I leave, and I couldn't make any promises. What I actually think, after taking several hours to process the fucking audacity of it, is: NO. This thing was not a priority for management/"leadership" for two and half years. I am not the reason we are not already using it, and thus not -- by extension -- the reason it's out of date. Should we switch over to it? Absolutely. Is that my problem in any way? Not at fucking all. 

And this bullshit, years of this bullshit, is exactly why I'm not going to miss this job one bit. It's not that it's a horrible place to work, exactly; but if I were recommending it to someone in good conscience I'd have to advise that they come, work here for a year or two to get some experience, and then start looking elsewhere.

Wizard and Warden, prequel two

Their two familiars disappeared into the rigging, Valerius' bat flapping silently to the forecastle while Malwyn's owl circled aft. 

"No sign of boats," Valerius said, half-leaning on his staff against the sway of the ship. 

"Nothing alarming back here," Malwyn answered, just before she caught a glimpse of movement out of the corner of her eye and gave an undignified squeak. She cut down at the scaled hand caught the top of the rail and a reptilian forehead raised itself up. 

"Malwyn?"

"Lizardfolk," she called loudly. "No boats, they're just swimming over."

"That," muttered Valerius, "explains a lot." He muttered and gestured, and a handful of glowing red darts launched themselves at a pair of lizardfolk who were coming up over the port railing. 

Malwyn focused, letting the outside world fall away. There was only her blade, the battle, and the aura of icy cold that she channeled into the steel. A faint white patina of frost covered it, and when she struck the lizardfolk warrior staggered back, the edges of the wound in its chest black with frostbite. She swung again, but missed. 

The sailors were fighting back as well, harpoons and belaying pins and a couple of well-placed nets all deployed to deadly effect, and for a moment it looked like the attack would break. Then a lizard-man appeared on the bow, having apparently climbed the anchor, and smashed down the first sailor to come at him with a long trident that seemed carved from pure ivory. Two more came up behind it, even as Valerius surrounded himself with a quartet of illusory images to make himself harder to hit.  

A series of fiery beams lanced out from the dwarven wizard's hand, striking the lizardfolk warleader; the warleader staggered back, but shook off the damage, raised his spear, and threw it. 

By sheer luck it found its target, and Valerius staggered back. Blood stained the shoulder of his robe.

Malwyn broke off from the injured lizard-warrior and flung herself between them. She felt the brush of a bone-tipped spear against the back of her hair as she moved, but another sailor moved in with a belaying pin and she lost track of the enemy behind her. She couldn't get up the stairs and reach the warleader and his guards, but she could distract them... 

She cast the spell she had prepared earlier: Enlarge. 

The warleader, now half her size, lowered his head briefly, hissed, and then flung himself forward. His guards followed at his heels. 

She caught him with her enlarged greatsword before he could get close enough to attack, cut him and poured frost into the wound. The warleader twisted, ignoring the injury, and stabbed hard with his trident, driving it into her thigh. She'd need to remember to dodge; at this size, she was an easy target. And how the hell had he gotten it back? That had to be magic.

The two guards continued past her, angling for Valerius, but Valerius met one of them with Shocking Grasp. It wasn't enough damage to take the guard out, but it was definitely enough to set it back on its heels. 

Malwyn swung at the warleader, and this time both strikes connected; with the additional damage from the aura of frost around her blade, he went down. 

The guards were still focused on Valerius, and two of his illusory doubles disappeared to when they attacked. Valerius and his remaining doubles gestured at the undamaged one, and it collapsed, paralyzed. Malwyn brought her sword around, and cut down the injured guard; at the edge of the railing, one of the lizard-folk looked up to meet her eyes, then threw itself backwards into the water. 

A moment later the attack was over. The lizard-folk who could were escaping; Malwyn thought that was less than half of them, maybe as little as a fifth. 

The ship's captain, Cleave Sparkstone, came hurrying down from the raised stern. "What now?" he asked. 

Valerius was looking at his pierced and blood-stained robe in disgust. "Find their ship," he said quietly, looking over at Malwyn. "If we can't find it, we question to the prisoner here." He gestured down at the immobile lizard-woman at his feet. 

"Ropes," growled the captain. "Bind this one to the mast!"

Challenge: Skills

(This post is part of the Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge. You can find links to other writers' answers over at Long and Short Reviews. I have not been following along as reliably this year as I did in previous years, but I'm still participating! Mostly.)

This week's prompt is actually my thoughts on social media which right now I do not have. However, I did finally come up with an answer for last week's prompt. A week late, but here it is: 

Prompt: A Skill I Wish More People Had, And Why

I wish more people were skilled at taking no for an answer. 

Yes, sometimes more discussion is needed. Sometimes arguing back is appropriate. But I feel like the world would generally be a better if place if more people practiced answering, "Okay," when they got told "no".

Also I wish people were better at time management. And yes, I am looking directly at the fact that I'm answering last week's prompt right now.

Driving Needs, part fourteen

"Cleanup crew's here," said Captain Saintcrow. "I think it's safe for you three to take off."

Antoinette nodded. "What's the final count? What the hell actually happened here?"

"Not sure," she answered. "We won't know until all reports are filed, and even then we might get something wrong. But I've got at least four magi who got together to summon a skin-stealer from the Grey, and a fifth who they apparently sacrificed so it could wear his skin. The skin-stealer then managed to shoot all four of them, dumped the weapon somewhere, and cozied up to a businessman whom it promptly skinned in his own hotel room. He managed to fling himself off the balcony, possibly with its help, and you and your wolf caught up with it before it could finish getting whatever it wanted from me. Meanwhile, your other wolf found the dead magi, allowing us to keep that from becoming public knowledge... all in all, I'd say all three of you have done some really good work today. Tom's people seem to agree."

"All right," said Antoinette. "You've got my number. Ping me if you need anything else."

Chris nodded, because as one of the Ministry's ROs that was what he was supposed to be doing at this point. He was still thinking about the fox, and his feelings were ambivalent: he wanted her to want him; he wanted her far, far away. 

He followed Antoinette back to the car, still distracted, then forced himself to focus and unlocked the doors. 

When they were inside and pulling away, Antoinette said: "So... Elyssa and I have a bet. Neither of us has really seen you scared, and, well, given some of the situations we've been in that just seems wrong. So we have a couple of challenges for you, beyond just driving the car."

"Driving the car isn't--" Chris cut himself off. "All right. What did you have in mind?" Whatever this was, he would go with it.

"Ice skating," said Elyssa.

"Ice skating?" 

"Ice skating," Antoinette told him.

Chris forced his jaw to unclench. "All right. Ice skating."

Driving Needs, part thirteen

"Can I ask you something?" asked the fox, squatting down beside Chris where he was keeping watch on the skin-stealer's body. 

Chris suppressed a momentary nervousness and said, "Sure." 

"When you first got to that conference room, did the smell of gunpowder seem unusually strong?" 

Chris considered that. "Yes. I mean, also blood and voided bowels, but... yes."

The fox nodded. "I thought so. It seemed to be concentrated just inside the door, like the intruder stopped to shoot everybody on the way out."

"I didn't get far enough into the room to compare," Chris looked at the body in front of him, then met the fox's eyes. She was older than he was by several years, unexpectedly attractive with that red-brown hair and those dark brown eyes, that hint of sharpness to her teeth. He ignored that particular stirring -- and what the hell could he do about it, really? -- and added, "Thought it was better to close the door and call it in."

"You're young for Enforcement," the fox told him. "All three of you are. Most teams don't get sent into the Grey until their fourth of fifth year, when they've established themselves." 

Chris froze, then deliberately rolled his shoulders. "You've been looking at our files." 

The fox tilted her head. "Does that bother you?" 

"Yes," he said immediately. "It shouldn't, and I should have known you would -- but I didn't, and I don't like being surprised." 

"We're investigators," the fox said, looking away to check over their surroundings. "It's what we do."

Chris nodded. "I know. Like I said, I should have expected it." They squatted side by side in silence for a long moment, and then he said: "Makes it damned hard to cultivate an aura of mystery, too."

The fox laughed, a startled bark. "Mystery? Around a fox? That's catnip for us. You do that, you're all but asking for us to take an interest."

Chris chuckled. "All right. If I have to guess -- and I'm guessing you want me to -- even after reading our files, you're wondering how an inexperienced group like us wound up covering an established first responder like Captain Saintcrow in a very public, very unusual situation like this."

The fox smiled at him and offered a slight shrug. "You were on the scene before we were; we'd have had to interview you regardless. I'm not saying you're wrong, though."

Chris rose to his feet and turned away from the murderer's corpse. "Magus Frummelt," he said simply. "He knew we were nearby on other business, so he tapped us when this came up."

"Your magus reports to him?" 

Chris nodded. "She does."

"If I'm reading your files right, all three of you have stumbled into some things that should have killed you and managed to survive. Is that why he brought you onto his team?" 

Chris hesitated, knowing that the fox was probably reading his expression no matter how blank he kept it. "I'm going to say yes, but if you want more detail you're going to have to ask Magus Frummelt."

"Ah." The fox waited for a heartbeat, then asked: "So why didn't you follow the skin-stealer? By all accounts your senses are excellent. You and Elyssa must have both known that you were sending her down the fresher trail. You're not a coward, either; if anything, I'd have expected you to throw yourself after the intruder."

Chris nodded. "You're not wrong. It just..." He remembered the voice of the dark heart. "...It seemed more important to find out where that thing had come from and how it got here."

"Well," said the fox, "you weren't wrong either. And you probably saved the Cleanup crew a lot of headaches; if one of the mundanes had found that room first, it would have created a lot more work."